The Water Cooler

Science, Technology, Business, and Politics

Saturday, September 25, 2004

Pols Misrepresent Eachother! Someone at the AP needs a little edumacation on the difference between "news" and "editorial." About 70% of this article is Bush "misrepresentations" of Kerry, to 30% of the reverse. But more importantly, some of the alleged Bush "misrepresentations" are not that at all. Her explanations of Kerry's remarks on our foreign allies and the Iraqi leader are particularly weak. She claims that, sure, Kerry did disparage these people, but they were meant as criticisms of Bush. What? The Bush campaign said that these remarks would hurt America's ability to cooperate with these other countries - which is true, regardless of Kerry's intent. That is not a "twisting" or "misrepresentation." Just because it reflects badly on Kerry doesn't mean it isn't true.

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Why people aren’t buying Tablet PCs "While Tablet PCs have intrigued the marketplace, there’s been a lot of speculation why they haven’t sold better commercially. Conventional wisdom would state that price is the leading issue but as usual, conventional wisdom is wrong. A recent Jupiter Research survey shows only 32 percent of online consumers planning to purchase a laptop are not willing to pay anything for Tablet PC functionality, indicating price is not the greatest adoption hurdle. The same study shows that 61 percent of online consumers interested in using Tablet PCs prize traditional notebook functionality in a Tablet PC. It’s not that the tablet concept doesn’t resonate with consumers, or the higher price. It’s about devices that don’t live up to consumer expectations in many cases and an under-educated consumer marketplace."

Monday, September 20, 2004

"When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered the ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 Billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300C.